Bill Hand: Can't turn down a stray cat

Published: Saturday, November 16, 2013 at 08:03 PM.

We are way over-catted in our house. It comes from a daughter too obsessed with felines and a father too quick to rescue helpless beasts.

I am not saying this to convince you to start dumping your cats at our house. Our current number is an absolute cut-off. At some point you have to find sanity, after all. The last two kittens that showed up (our front yard is a stray kitten magnet) I turned over to rescue centers.

From childhood I have been around pets. We had one to two dogs, a cat (I don’t really remember ever having more than one at a time) and who-knows-what growing up. For a time we had hamsters. Watching them devour their young turned us into gerbil converts, and my father built this huge gerbil cage out of wood and chicken wire that we kept in the basement. The lid was a bit of plywood or blackboard or something.

It was not hinged. We removed it to get at the gerbils inside — I seem to recall four of them. And, being little kids, we then neglected to put it back.

The gerbils couldn’t get out on their own, exactly: the walls were too high. But we had a cat that could easily jump in.

Now, with most cats, this is the part where you cover your children’s eyes: panicking rodents, followed by blood and then well-fed cats would follow.

But this cat had a flawed hunting instinct and a profound mothering instinct. So she would pick the gerbils up, one at a time as if they were her kittens, and carry them like kittens up to the main floor of the house.

We are way over-catted in our house. It comes from a daughter too obsessed with felines and a father too quick to rescue helpless beasts.

I am not saying this to convince you to start dumping your cats at our house. Our current number is an absolute cut-off. At some point you have to find sanity, after all. The last two kittens that showed up (our front yard is a stray kitten magnet) I turned over to rescue centers.

From childhood I have been around pets. We had one to two dogs, a cat (I don’t really remember ever having more than one at a time) and who-knows-what growing up. For a time we had hamsters. Watching them devour their young turned us into gerbil converts, and my father built this huge gerbil cage out of wood and chicken wire that we kept in the basement. The lid was a bit of plywood or blackboard or something.

It was not hinged. We removed it to get at the gerbils inside — I seem to recall four of them. And, being little kids, we then neglected to put it back.

The gerbils couldn’t get out on their own, exactly: the walls were too high. But we had a cat that could easily jump in.

Now, with most cats, this is the part where you cover your children’s eyes: panicking rodents, followed by blood and then well-fed cats would follow.

But this cat had a flawed hunting instinct and a profound mothering instinct. So she would pick the gerbils up, one at a time as if they were her kittens, and carry them like kittens up to the main floor of the house.

But they were not her kittens. They were basically furry-tailed rats and, like any rats that suddenly found themselves free of a cat’s jaws, they ran for cover.

My father or one of us would later discover the empty cage and we would go on a two- to three-day hunt for gerbils. Eventually most of them would turn up: under chairs and couches, under counters. There always seemed to be one we couldn’t find, so we’d wait another day or so and walk around throwing sunflower seeds behind things. When we heard the famished cracking of seed hulls, we knew we’d found our gerbils.

We had a baby possum once, too, whose mother had been road-killed. Our school science teacher brought them in and awarded them to whoever wanted them. I took one, but in those days we didn’t know much about feeding baby animals and eventually it died.

Cats have distinct personalities. When you get a dog (and don’t get me wrong, I love dogs), you have a pretty good notion of its personality by its breed. You partly pick a breed because you like a certain personality.

But getting a cat is a little like hauling a random child in off the street. You don’t know what you’re going to wind up with… well, if you haul a random child in off the street, you do know what you’re going to get: a policeman and some trouble. But you understand what I’m getting at.

Some cats love laps. We have a 22-pound feline monstrosity with a tiny head (he kind of reminds me of a really furry tick) who spends every moment he can on my lap. We have other cats who don’t mind a pat on the head, but want nothing to do with being picked up.

One of our cats stares at walls. She just sits there and stares at walls.

Another is obsessed with ice. We don’t dare leave a glass of ice water sitting around. He also likes to lie on the shelf beside you and stare at you while he pushes things off.

We have our gentle, mousey cat and the cat that just hauls off and smacks anyone she’s not pleased with — cat or human. This same cat that is a bit of a terror at home, is a purring lover at the vet’s. The ice-loving cat who, outside of his schizophrenic moments when he’ll suddenly bite you, is actually pretty laid back and loving, turns into a hissing demon the second you walk through a vet’s door.

Three of our cats were rescued from the shelter — one of those had been abandoned on the NeuseRiverBridge. One we got from a friend, another my daughter rescued from a parking lot, and the other simply showed up at the door one day and refused to leave.

The dog tolerates them, though she is only really fond of the 22-pound furry tick. She plays with that cat, and sometimes she’ll just stand there and chew on his head, which the cat tolerates with wonderful aplomb.

Cats are great, but ours is definitely a house with too much of a good thing. As much as I’ll miss each one when it passes on, I kind of look forward to the day we’re winnowed down to one or two.